Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott announced that the former site of Franciscan/St. Margaret Hospital is now owned by the city.

“The deed was received from Franciscan last week and we promptly recorded it so that the city can move on to the next exciting chapter on this site,” McDermott said in a press release.

The site, which occupies an entire square city block and is nearly eight acres, was home for over a century to St. Margaret Hospital. The hospital was recently part of the Franciscan hospital network until its closure was announced in December 2022.

“Losing the hospital was a shock, and we fought it, but we’ve moved on—and now my economic development team is focused on redevelopment of this large parcel of land that will continue to add to our downtown renaissance anchored along Hohman Avenue,” McDermott said.

Through an agreement with Franciscan, the city obtained the site after Franciscan paid for and completed the demolition in a little over a year.

“We’re grateful to Franciscan for transferring the land at no cost and for completing the demolition work in a timely manner,” Anne Taylor, the city’s Department of Redevelopment executive director, said.

The former hospital site kept one building standing on the northeast corner, which was transferred to Purdue Northwest and is being rehabilitated into the Roberts Impact Lab for Quantum Commercialization, slated to open in 2026. The parking garage on site was also spared from demolition so that it can provide downtown parking to future users of the site.

“This is a very important site to our downtown plan and is within walking distance of our new downtown South Shore station—we already are fielding calls from interested developers,” Taylor said.

The city anticipates making the site available to developers via a Request for Proposals in early 2026.

“We’ve seen how popular downtown Hammond parcels are for developers and we expect big demand for this site as well,” Juan Moreno, the city’s director of economic development, said.